Saturday, November 7, 2015

People Skills: Part Two - The Ray of Hope



Faith is the bird that feels the light when the dawn is still dark.
– Rabindranath Tagore

           
Before I go any further, I would first like to thank all of you who have read part I and given it a thought. It takes a lot of courage to share with the world something about ourselves that we are not proud of. However, once we own our story and decide not to run away from it, we do have, in ourselves, the power to change for the better. Change takes time; change takes practice, but change is inevitable. Readers, in my mind I have wondered a hundred times if what I am going to tell you today is worth talking about. Ninety out of hundred times my mind has told me, “Oh it’s so obvious. It’s so stupid. No one will find it interesting!” This is probably the train of thought holding me back a lot of times during conversations. Today I will give it a shot. I will share with you a few stories and my thoughts over the last few months.


            I met Saptarshi, senior to me by a year, at the dramatic society I was a member of back in my IIT days. We stayed in the same hall of residence. From the institute foyer – where we used to meet up for rehearsals – to the nearest tap of drinking water was about a minute’s walk, but not all the time were we in a mood to go get water ourselves. One day Saptarshi asked me if I had water. My bottle was empty, so I said no. Later that day, I felt thirsty; I walked up to the tap, drank water, and came back with my bottle full. Shortly after, another senior, from a different hall of residence, asked for water. I offered him readily. Saptarshi noticed this, and said, “Dipanjan, what was that? You favored a senior from another hall and turned down one from your own! How could you!” Today I would have relished his sarcasm, but those were days when, for me, humor used to exist only in literature. This, along with my low self-esteem, dried my mouth, and made me feel guilty of bad manners.

            Fortunately, it did not take long for me to observe and appreciate the fact that Saptarshi was my polar opposite in social circles – brimming with energy, cracking jokes on everyone including himself, bursting into frequent laughter, and keeping people around him entertained for hours. His artistic pursuits, in addition to his ability to take everything easy, made me think that he was living nothing short of the life of his dreams. As we came closer, I learnt that, when the ‘guilt-trip’ incident happened, he was struggling with a back pain and getting ready to undergo a spine surgery. Such was his strength that he could go having fun with everyone for hours when he could not even sit properly, for his back used to ache. I wonder how many of us could even imagine what the very popular comedian was going through. In my heart I felt great respect for him, but there was something more to come.

            One night I went to his room for some entertainment. He was busy looking up an article on Wikipedia. As I asked what the article was on, he said, “The Chakras”. Clueless, I asked him to explain. “Oh well, there are seven of them. They’re nodes – from top to bottom – where the energy’s concentrated in the human body. Those with energy at the second highest node become musicians; those with energy at the highest become sages, and …”, he went on explaining. What I thought was supposed to be an hour of laughter ended up being a two and a half hours of lecture – on spiritual awakening, the beliefs and values in ancient India, the teachings of Swami Vivekananda, and some more. An avid listener, quiet and spellbound, I sat pinned to the chair as he kept on illuminating my mind, making natural and effortless transitions through topics. This was so uncharacteristic of the happy-go-lucky Saptarshi I had ever known. The two and a half hours felt like an eternity. For me, it was entertainment – not the way I imagined, but certainly the way I loved. When he finally stopped, he thanked me for listening, and said the following:

Dipanjan, you’ve never seen me like this, right? Look, I’m a very serious person. I study all that I shared with you tonight. BUT, if you ever bring these up when we’re having fun as a group, I’ll be the person yelling at you. Do you know why? When people are looking for fun, I show my light-hearted side, not my serious side…”


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As a child, I learnt that we have four basic needs: food, clothing, shelter and education. It has only been a while since I started to see that education means a lot more than our academic curriculum. Education is what opens our soul to the world. In order to live a healthy life, we all want to be loved, accepted and felt part of a society that nurtures our interests. No one wants to feel isolated and left behind. An educated soul knows that we must give what we want to receive – be it love, respect, honor, appreciation, acceptance or whatever else. An educated soul knows something more. If we want to share these beautiful feelings with the world, we must share them with ourselves first. We must learn self-love, self-acceptance and self-compassion to get rid of low self-esteem and self-deprecating self-talk. Instead of telling ourselves, “I can’t do what a lot of people are doing effortlessly day in and day out”, we should learn to say, “I’m a human being. It’s okay if certain things do not come naturally to me. If they’re important, I can learn them, and I know that I will.” The world looks different – and a better place to live – once we start holding ourselves high. The first amazing change we notice in ourselves is that we start holding everyone high.

             So, after a few friends pointed out and Saptarshi demonstrated what I need to learn, it is up to me to make conscious changes when dealing with people. Change takes time; changes takes practice, but change is inevitable. Amir, older to me by six years, is one of my best colleagues at Texas A&M. I once said to him, “I feel so sad, Amir. You know, there are so many people I just do not get along with. I mean, how nice it’ll be if I can, but the truth is that I just don’t!” With a gentle smile, Amir replied, “Man, you don’t have to!” I see his phone busy all day, so I did not understand him at first. “You know, we’re all different people by nature. Some people like to get close; some do not. Some people like to hear details; some do not. Plus, we come from different places and cultures. For example, I’ve seen people from small towns, and from big cities. They’re likely to have different styles. It’s okay…”

An avid reader and my source of light when it was all dark, Amir introduced me to a series of books – ‘Quiet’, ‘The Five Love Languages’, ‘The Gifts of Imperfection’, ‘Emotional Intelligence’, ‘Crucial Conversations’, ‘Mindful Compassion’ – that are gradually revealing a side of life I never knew exists. Thanks in addition to my exposure to the Myers-Briggs personality types, it makes perfect sense to me that I will get along well naturally with some people, while with some others it will take a lot of work. In addition, it is part of compassion to set boundaries and hold people accountable for their behavior. My strength today comes from the fact that, no matter how good my people skills become, I have always wanted and I will always want the best for myself and everyone, and I will continue working towards the same!